The End of the Isle

This then is the aching aeonic mating dance
of Gaia and her second husband Okeanos
her soaring arrogant cliffs jutting
coquettish, signalling response,
his ceaseless watery furor slowly breaking her resolve,
dissolving her minerals,
his shellfish recycling them.

I have descended at least a hundred feet
clambering over great slate sheets and tufts of turf.
All along the hump of gorse and grass which curves towards the
break, swift-sliding death,
at thirty two feet per second per second,
the rock bleeds quartz, whitish exuded drippings
down in tapped veins two hundred more feet to
the tide-rounded boulders, lost sons of the cliff,
spattered in yellow and orange lichen
as if giants fought their battles with mustard and Russian dressing.

The above I jotted in my notebook as I stood on the cliffside on the southern part of the Isle of Man on March 21, before hiking down to the Calf of Man Sound and up to Cregneash, a Manx folk village which is unfortunately closed for the season.

London Redux

My first period of respite found me residing in North London at YHA Hampstead Heath, having lately returned from Cornwall, then to spend the subsequent few days resting and relaxing, attending films, museums for round two, or in some cases four, and hiking on the aforementioned Heath, while I contemplated my next move. The first night I got in late from Bristol and spent the evening chatting about Zionism with a British Jew who approached me by commenting on the chess game being played by children in the room where we watched a doc about Genghis Khan, which was drowned out subjectively by our conversation and objectively by a plethora of young Spanish children who nattered on about their pre-pubescent topics (either willfully or blissfully) ignorant of their effect on the proximate adult populace. We discussed a wide range of topics, but the Middle Eastern conflict and the establishment of the State of Israel and its attendant consequences and history seemed to exert a centrifugal attraction on the conversation, as a tetherball may be batted further or closer to the pole, but never so far as to break free entirely of the subject. Such a thematic overarch, I suppose, was because of his early revelation of his ancestry and his name, David Cohen, and also his inquiry into my thoughts of the Iraq War as an American, seemingly collecting my opinion so as to add to a sort of personal Yank demography.

As with most such conversations, nothing came of it save sharpening of rhetorical teeth and further entrenched uncertainty. It came to light that he wasn't actually staying at the hostel but lived nearby and did not own a telly, so I never saw him again.

Other highlights of the Golder's Green trip included the viewing of Hidden (Caché), a French mystery film with Juliet Binoche, and Manderlay by Lars von Trier in cinemas, and Hamlet in theatre. The British Library was alos particularly impressive. While I lacked the time to peruse the stacks, which I think costs money anyhow, I viewed their collection of antique books, including the Lindisfarne Gospels, a Gutenberg bible, a fragment of Beowulf, and a page from the manuscript of Finnegans Wake, with the words written over each other, as if not a monolayer but palimpsest, and with marginalia going in all four cardinal directions. I also listened to some of the vast recordings collection, which I think is accessible online, including Yeats reading from some travel guide concerning Innisfree.

La Pared de Maíz

(incompleto)

Finire Fabulam...

Also in Cardiff I visited the Museum of Welsh Life, a 103 acre outdoor museum of transplanted traditional Welsh edifices, be they farmhouses, blacksmiths, churches, or barns. In one of the houses, dating from the 1700s and decorated accordingly, I met Geraint Bowyer, a bright-eyed Welshman who spoke in Received Pronunciation, as he had travelled widely about the UK, though in his cor cordium he was fiercely Welsh, advocating complete independence politically from the UK, however presumably not the Commonwealth and thus the just-terminated Commonwealth Games, though I did not press him on this point. Instead, we discussed the state of the Welsh language, culture, and politics for half and hour, then I left to continue exploration (incompletely by leptochrone necessity) of the Museum of Said Life.

My nights in Cardiff despite the previously professed knowledge of extant nocturnal revelry were calm, watching the movies played in the evening at the hostel such as About a Boy and Meaning of Life. On Tuesday, I took the train back to Bristol for a blessedly short stay of two hours before departing for Camilla's Duchy.

I am again about to leave London for the second time.
But that's too far ahead. I suppose I haven't updated, since, what, Dorchester. So I must fill in the interepistolary period with my memories, thus:

Dorchester night, I had nowhere to sleep, so I hopped a train to Bristol, paying more than I wished but acquiring in the process a still unused return ticket for cheap. I spent two nights in Bristol because, exhausted as I was, not knowing where to go next, that's what I paid for. So I got to know Bristol over the next few days. The film prices are half the rate in London, which is nice, and it's the location of one of the first Methodist meeting-houses outside of Oxford, next to the home of Charles Wesley. But other than that it's a fairly unimpressive port town extending first in twain, like trouser legs, on both sides of a truncated canal then into a main square lined with restaurants and clubs. I grew to detest it, though probably unfairly, because every time I went there it was due to poor travel planning or intractable train times. So anyway, after another night there I went to Cardiff, also because of intractable trains which insisted on being purchased in advance to be reasonably priced, despite my futile pleas to the till jockeys.
This time I liked the city a lot, in fact, I wish I had had more time there, and probably will go back, because Wales is quite beautiful. Cardiff as a city is, meh... There's Cardiff Castle, the Millenium Stadium and a science-cum-arts-cum-history museum and apparently very many nightclubs, as I was informed, but never experienced. From the descriptions, I gather that at ten or eleven o'clock on weekends a flood of terpsichorean flesh leaks out of the buses and restaurants to wriggle in smoke-drenched, overpriced fire marshal's nightmares. As with most large cities.

But I have tended to restrict myself to cinemas and underpopulated pubs, playing snooker perhaps or chatting about local culture and history with the locally-accented locals, as my modus potandi.

Well, I have not permitted myself enough time to finish this now, so I must to the bus for Liverpool, as it leaves in ten minutes.

Door to Dorchester

Hopefully, I will not have to resort to the above referenced strategy, but I have still not found accommodations for tonight. Hotels I had found in Weymouth turned out to be full. I'm going to go to Tourist Information though, here in Dorchester, they should be able to help me out.

On to today's travels: I took the 0840 GMT bus from Salisbury to Dorchester. As I left the town, we came up over a hill and, though I had spent much of yesterday traipsing around the hills and farmland near Stonehenge when I walked back to Amesbury from there, visiting the contemporaneous King's Barrows which crest the ridge facing the henge along the avenue to the Avon, the hypothesized processional path along which the great stones were transported, I had not expected the above sight. This photographic representation pales in comparison, quite literally, as the colors of life in the south Wiltshire were bright flashing chlorophyll and emerald, sapphire and sky, the early morning detritus of the night hung over what artists refer to as the middle distance giving it a haze which is, I think well represented in the photo. The white splotch on the left is not a stunning atmospheric oddity but whatever cream-colored grime is capable of climbing to the windows on the second story of a bus.

I arrived in Dorchester at half past ten and proceeded to find somewhere to leave my luggage, I mean backpack. Then I had tea and a sandwich and went to the Dorset County Museum, where I saw the study of Thomas Hardy, an ichthyosaur found in Lyme Regis about 10 miles southwest, and much information about the prehistoric mounds and ruins in the area. I then walked to Maumbury Rings, a Neolithic site once used as an amphitheater, following the invasion by Rome. These can be seen here: http://photos.yahoo.com/dougefresh42 in the album Oxford to Dorchester, along with many other pictures from the last few days.

Pulling Up My Salisbury Stakes

I spent this morning at Stonehenge and have just arrived at Amesbury (the library in fact) having hiked across the farmland, studded with prehistoric barrows, in between.
This area of England is quite beautiful. It is cold but not especially so. The birds are flocking, starlings, great tits, crows, as are the sheep, who are spray-painted brightly on the tails, I suppose for identification and ownership purposes. I have found what appears to be a primitive tool of some sort near one of the barrows on Salisbury Plain. On further reflection it is not nearly so finely articulated as to be of purposeful construction, although it uncannily fits my fingers just so, able as I am to imagine using it to chop roots or scrape the fat and tendon from inside of an animal hide. But these are fancies.

It has been quite fun travelling the land of Thomas Hardy, whether his Christminster (Oxford), his Melchester (Salisbury), or his Casterbridge (Dorchester), where I go next. The wide-rolling fields and copses of trees, the ancient monuments and the modern conveniences: it is quite a land.

Tonight, I will stay in Salisbury again but tomorrow I leave for Dorchester.

"The band of silver paleness along the east horizon made even the distant parts of the Great Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation which is usual just before day. The eastward pillars and their architraves stood up blackly against the light, and the great flame-shaped Sun-stone beyond them; and the Stone of Sacrifice midway. Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay still." - Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Pictures forthcoming